chaos & cooperation

Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. I am finishing three weeks in Europe so many of these posts reflect the interactions I had in Copenhagen, London, and Antwerp.

@meacoopa: “every liberal democracy realizes early on there are some positions which must prima facie be aggressively excluded from public discourse … Fascism wriggles into democracies by insisting on the right to be heard, achieves critical mass, then dissolves the organs that installed it.”

“Most national governments now face an existential battle on two fronts: protecting themselves from their own disgruntled populations, and defending against foreign governments vying for power in the next wave of global dominance. It’s as though we’re in one big Mexican standoff between every country and religion and tribe in the world, all pointing guns at each other while we wait for the next big shoe to drop. That’s how Russia, though economically beleaguered and globally isolated, has found itself so powerful suddenly — it’s a good time to be a chaos agent.“

‘Cambridge Analytica also uses, Nix told us, “surveys on social media” and Facebook data. And the company does exactly what Kosinski warned of: “We have profiled the personality of every adult in the United States of America—220 million people,” Nix boasts.’

The amazing Port House of Antwerp mixes the old with the new. It was a great location to present on working in perpetual beta and conduct a workshop on leaderships in networks. Many thanks to Filip Callawaert for the kind invitation to spend a day with the Port Authority.